Double Preeta

I picked up two magazines today which both contain articles I've written on Preeta Samarasan. And both also have a plenty more great book related stuff to read.

Preeta is cover girl of MPH's Quill magazine (free to cardholders, RM8 to others, at branches of MPH) with a gorgeous portrait photo taken by top New York-based photographer Miriam Berkley who talks about her work and about what makes a great author photo inside.

The piece on Preeta here is an e-mail interview in which I ask her about the starting point of her novel, how far the family in the novel is based on her own (perish the thought!), how doing an MFA helped her and whether writing from outside the country gives her more freedom to write honestly. Do go pick up a copy to find out the answers! Preeta herself writes a very interesting piece - No More Dirty Laundry : In Defence of Fiction.

In other pieces I enjoyed, Chet writes about her "torrid affair with digital books" (!) ; Lydia gives poor, mistreated books a voice; Amir Muhammad (who seems to have the scary ability of getting everywhere these days!) reviews Adibah Amin's Glimpses; Daphne Lee writes about one of my favourite Scottish folk heroes Tam Lin; Yang May Ooi talks about her encounters with British food and Saradha Narayanan talks about hanging up her stethoscope to become an author.

The other magazine is Off the Edge and my piece about Preeta here is a review of Evening is the Whole Day. I am so happy that Jason Tan gave me the space I needed.

There are the usual thought-provoking articles about politics and the arts, and the more literary things include another episode in the life of Kam's Datuk, and the second extract from Kee Thuan Chye's The Swordfish and Then the Concubine, as well as reviews of two recent publications from The Edge Publications, Shape of a Pocket by Jacqueline Anne Surin, and Tipping Points : Viewpoints on the Reasons for and Impact of the March 8 Election Earthquake. Benjamin McKay reviews Shanon Shah's play Air Con.

Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah is the cover boy here, and the subject of a very lengthy interview with Jason. I wonder if he will still be able to mount a challenge for the presidency of UMNO and really hope so.

* (The piece is not online at the moment - but may be later.)

Quill Online

Quill, published by MPH Bookstores now has a very good website up and running, featuring pieces from the magazine which is available in bookstores.

Robert Raymer (one of the judges) pours balm on the hurt feelings and wounded egos of those who did not make the shortlist to the MPH Short Story Competition in his piece Prove Them Wrong!; Tom Sykes describes A Haphazard Journey Through Java, and there is a very sensible piece (which I could have done with reading some years ago) about how to get your money back from the loved ones you've lent it to, without creating bad feeling.

And ... here's Chan Siew Fun's review of the first e-reader to become available locally (at last!) - the Hanlin V5 E-reader.

The magazine is off to a very good start - congrats to editor May Lee and the team.

Learning the Language of the Past

The notebooks excited me because, for all their gaps and mysteries, they recorded, verbatim, conversations around which I could build a story. I’d have to invent the context for the conversations, and I’d have to speculate about the people who spoke the words, and I was uncertain about how appropriate it was to do that. But in the end I felt it was important to try, because this story was one that recorded an aspect of our past—shared between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians—that was hugely important. It records a moment in that shared history where mutual goodwill and generous curiosity created real understanding.

Australian novelist, Kate Grenville (shortlisted for the 2009 Booker Prize for The Secret River), writes about how the contents of two notebooks brought alive to the friendship between a young lieutenant in a newly formed penal colony at the end of the C18th, and a young aboriginal girl; and how she set about using and this material and fleshing it out with further research. She says:

As a novelist I have latitude to speculate, to add, to omit, to guess and even to invent. But I also have available to me all the richness of the historical record. In a tradition that goes back to Homer and beyond, I’ve taken events that took place in the real world and used them as the basis for a work of imagination.

(You can preview the novel, The Lieutenant on Google Books.)

There are so many more excellent articles for the various editions of Quill magazine posted up on Eric Forbes' blog, so I urge you to go have a read. Quill seems to have evolved over the past couple of years into one of the best literary magazines - anywhere!

Crime Pays for Shamini

... crime fiction is a great prism through which to explore the tensions within modern Asian society because it is inevitably about conflict—and the starting point is, of course, murder. The genre allows for the interaction between people of different social stratas, race and religion to be explored at length. I find the idea of reflecting contemporary Asian society in crime writing exhilarating. From racial and religious divides in Malaysia (Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder), terrorism and social dysfunction in Bali (Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul, due in September 2009), to greed and exploitation in Singapore (Inspector Singh Investigates: A Singapore School of Villainy, due in February 2010), there are the plots for a dozen novels in any Asian country. I certainly hope that more Asian writers will turn to crime fiction writing!

In an essay up on Eric's blog and written for the Singapore Writers Festival version of MPH's Quill magazine, Sharmini Flint asks why there is no real crime writing tradition in Asia ... and why the region actually lends itself to the genre.‘

Miguel Syjuco's Writing Life

There are many things I enjoy about my life as a writer. Like any life, it’s filled with profundities and superficialities: I love never, ever having to wake up to the shriek of an alarm clock ever again; I love the fact that the constant reading of good books is a required exercise for the betterment of my craft; I love being able to take a week off whenever I want, while I’m ostensibly “thinking,” and that the act of living is research for what I will one day write. More than anything, I love being able to see how things connect and work out, and seeing my skills grow before my eyes. But like anything, there’s the flip side—I wake up and have to have a tremendous amount of discipline to work and not just watch TV or think of titles for great works I dream of one day writing; I have a hard time reading books for pure enjoyment because I’m either reviewing them or unavoidably studying them for my craft; and I have to work long stretches—weekdays, holidays and weekends—to meet deadlines, or get bits of my work right. As a writer, I have many issues: Am I hamfisted? Am I relevant? Is my work worth reading? Have I lost touch with the world while I was at home sequestered at my desk? Am I pigeonholing myself into an ethnicity? Am I misguided in my experiments and theories about how my fiction works? Should I just quit and do something else? I write to better understand myself and my place in the world, and my writing is an articulation of what I’m working through. Those can’t help but be very private thoughts and ideas, but we write and publish because we have faith that what we’re writing has some value worth sharing. But there’s always that fear that I’m wrong, that I’m just like that guy at a party who is drunk and coked up and insists on telling everyone his great ideas. The search for self-knowledge can’t help but come with self-doubt. The quest for constant improvement can’t help but include growing pains.

Eric Forbes interviews 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize-winner Miguel Syjuco about how he finds life as an author; his unconventional début novel Ilustrado (which will be published around the world next Spring), winning the Man Booker, and much more besides. The article appears in the Singapore Writer's Festival edition of Quill magazine, and is very well worth reading. Syjuco will be appearing at the Singapore Writers' Festival (October 24 to November 1, 2009).

Vikas for Ubud

Always chase your dreams. If you want to be a writer, then don’t get disheartened by the first couple of rejection slips. As I have discovered, it takes just one good agent to help you make your mark in the world. But the important thing is that your product must objectively be good. There are writers, I am sure, who think they have written the next Nobel Prize-winning novel, but maybe the novel is not so good. So get objective advice. Consult your friends, your colleagues, consult those who read books and if they like your book then, I don’t think you should give up, you should keep on trying and I’m sure you will hit the jackpot someday.

Slumdog Millionaire author Vikas Swarup gives encouragment to wannabe-published writers and talks about his work in an interview with Deepika Shetty for Quill magazine. It's up on Eric's blog.

Swarup's new novel is Six Suspects which he describes as an unconventional murder mystery. The author will be appearing at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival next month.

Fiction Sandwich

I'm very happy that Eric Forbes picked up a piece from this blog, my heart-felt guide to reading while eating, and published it in Quill magazine.

I still get angry with the ridiculous, overstuffed things the restaurants here claim are "sandwiches". I tell you, the Earl of Sandwich would turn in his grave.'

Above : an unacceptable "sandwich" for a reader

If the filling falls out, if substances ooze, if you can't get a good grip of it in one hand, or your mouth around it easily, then, it isn't worthy of the name and you should send it back to the kitchen with the superfluous knife and fork.

Potted Ubud

Okay then. Some of my personal highlights of the Ubud Writers Festival 2008.

Biggest Thrill :

Sorry for drifting to the far shores of groupiedom but Vikram Seth is one of my very favourite authors of all time and meeting him was magic.

Sessions I Enjoyed Most :

I like best the sessions where authors talk about their creative process and their path to publication and came away most inspired from the session with Australian authors Carrie Tiffany and Alexis Wright. Wright won the Miles Franklin with Carpentaria and Carrie Tiffany was shortlisted for the Orange Prize with Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living.

I also very much enjoyed the panel Crime : Fact and Fiction with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil author John Berendt (for me, another of the stars of Ubud) , Shamini Flint, Liz Porter (whose book about forensic science I wrote about here), and Hilary Bonney author of The Society Murders about a famous Melbourne murder case. (I found this a fascinating read.)

And if I came to Ubud in love with Vikram Seth I went away besotted with Mexican magical realist Alberto Ruy Sanchez (who will be here in KL next week - and hopefully prepared to do a reading for us.)

What Made Me Proudest :

Malaysian authors were right there in the spotlight and did us all proud. I very much enjoyed the panel Malaysians Making History which featured Preeta, Chiew-Siah and the usually reclusive Faisal Tehrani.

Seeing the Ubud edition of MPH's Quill magazine in everyone's hands with three of my articles inside and tons of other good stuff and hearing from folks that they had enjoyed the interviews.

That Janet de Neefe acknowledged me in the credits in the programme, along with Eric Forbes. My part is small - blogging the festival, providing the contacts of writers at this end - so I was very touched that she'd thought of me.

Other Things I'm Happy About :

Learning about authors and books which have thus far slipped under my radar. Making lots of contacts. Authors saying yes, they'd love to drop by KL and meet readers here.

Meeting my Balinese blogfriend SapiMalas who is as much a bookaholic as I am.

Having time to network informally and look at ways we can coordinate with friends in other countries.
Most Surreal Moment :

Helping Vikram Seth weigh the Balinese gong he'd bought to send home!

Best Event not on the Official Programme :

I thank Karim Razlan for organising a magical nasi lemak dinner in his garden, under the stars for writers and Malaysian friends. (And I got to sit next to Vikram Seth!!!!).

I also loved the post-festival writers' lunch at John Hardy's place - one the world's most prominent jewellers has his "factory" in the Balinese padi fields and his showroom is a bamboo cathedral with a stream running through. Now that was another lovely balinese nasi campur and it's just a shame I could afford to buy a few samples.

Biggest Disappointments :

Several authors couldn't make it. I had so wanted to meet Indra Sinha and had even planned to interview him for Off the Edge. Aravind Adiga of course had bigger fish to fry. Nigerian short story writer and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan had visa problems. Lisa St Aubin de Teran was a no show too. Sad sad.

Thing that Made me Most Grumpy :

Seeing all the lovely books on sale and only being able to buy a few because I couldn't carry more back, they were so expensive anyway compared with prices in Malaysia.

Getting a really bad cold and feeling like **** for much of the festival. Leaving my camera in a taxi.

Person I'd Like to Strangle :The journalist from a pan-Asian newspaper who picked up and then dropped a copy of Quill and was overheard saying sniffily that he didn't read magazines produced by Malaysians.

(More on individual sessions later.)

Literary Curry

If you picked up the free copy of MPH's Quill magazine, you will have read my interview with Janet de Neefe, who founded the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival. Janet and her husband Ketut Suardana run two of Bali's most famous restaurants, Casa Luna of Ubud and Indus of Campuan, (website here) as well as Honeymoon Guesthouse where regular cookery classes are held. Janet is also the author of Fragrant Rice: My Continuing Love Affair with Bali published by Harper Collins Australia.

Sadly, there was one question that had to be cut due to space constraints, and since I asked it for you, I append it here because this dish is absolutely yummy!: Could you give us a typical Balinese recipe that our Malaysian readers might enjoy? KARE AYAM Chicken curry Probably the most wonderful aspect of making a curry is the heavenly aromas that drift through the house when food is being prepared. Balinese chicken curry is lighter than its Indian counterpart. You can also replace the chicken with any other meat, fish or vegetable. For maximum flavour, I always use chicken thigh or leg with the bone for a curry. However, you can use chicken breast or boned meat if you prefer. Use fresh galangal and turmeric for this dish as the flavour, aroma and texture will be far superior to the powdered varieties. Serves 3-4 750 g chicken pieces 1-2 cups coconut milk 5 tbs oil for frying 1 lemongrass 3 salam leaves (These are a kind of Indonesian bay leaves) 4 lime leaves sea salt 2 tsp tamarind Spices: 5 small red shallots 7 small cloves garlic 3 large red chilli 2-3 bird's-eye chillies 1 tbs ginger 3 tbs galangal 3 candlenut 1 tbs fresh turmeric ½ tomato 2 stalks of lemongrass 1/4 tsp shrimp paste 2 tsp coriander seeds 1/4 tsp cumin (opt) 1 tbs palm sugar Blend all the spices in the container of a food processor until paste-like. Add a little water if necessary. Bruise the extra lemon grass and tie into a loose knot. Heat the oil in a wok over a medium flame. Throw in the spices, lemongrass, lime leaves and salam leaves. Push them back and forth confidently for 30 seconds until fragrant and shiny, making sure they don’t burn on the base of the wok. Add the chicken and toss around until sealed or half-cooked. This will take at least two minutes. Add two cups of water and boil for about fifteen minutes or until the meat is cooked. Now add the final layer of coconut milk. Bring to the boil, simmer for a minute and then turn off. Check seasonings and serve topped with shallots. Add sea salt to taste. Alternatives: Potatoes, beans, or carrots may be added, or tempe/tofu may be used as a meat substitute.

Preeta Samarasan Interview Part 1

Eric's given me the green-light to put up this interview with Preeta which appears both in the most recent issue of MPH's Quill and the special Ubud edition. I've split it into two parts because it is rather long and will post the second tomorrow. Enjoy!

When did you first decide that you wanted to be a writer? Was it something that you had always set your heart on?

I always loved writing; I remember making up little stories and writing them down from the time I could write full sentences. In Standard Three I wrote a tragic, multi-generational saga about a family of cockroaches in a notebook which is now, thankfully, missing. But when I decided I wanted to be a writer -- that’s a much tougher question. My parents encouraged us to pursue a variety of interests, but in their thoughts on career choices they were quite traditional and conservative. I think this reflects Malaysian society in general, especially as it was in the ‘80s, so I didn’t think of writing as something that real people could actually choose to do as a career. Being an author was, you know, for dead people, or white people, or (ideally) for dead white people. So I tried a number of other things (while continually fantasizing about being a writer) and went through a period of disaffectation before I decided, in the winter of 1999, that I was going to finish a novel and try to get it published, and see where that took me. I was at the time enrolled in a PhD. program in musicology; a few years after that, when the novel was going well and I was getting a lot of positive feedback, I decided to leave and Become A Writer.

You dedicate the novel to your parents and brothers who you say taught you that words matter. How exactly was that love of words fostered during your childhood?


My mother taught us to read when we were very young, and books and language were always accorded great respect in our house. While my father was teaching, he would bring home a fresh batch of books from his school library every week, and this was understood by all of us to be the finest of treats. There were books everywhere, and books were an expense my parents never questioned, even though we were not rich by any means. Even now, when I’m browsing in a bookshop in KL with my mother and I stop myself from splurging on hardcover books, my mother protests, “But it’s books, what!” As a child I was encouraged not only to entertain and better myself with books, but -- and I think this is crucial -- to seek solace from them. This is what I mean when I talk about words mattering: the understanding that beautiful language, in and of itself, is fundamentally good for the spirit. I’m grateful for being allowed to discover that at a very early age.

You decided to do an Master of Fine Arts degree (MFA) in Creative Writing. One criticism of creative writing courses that I’ve heard repeated is that they push authors to write in particular way. Did you find this?

No, absolutely not. I’m not sure if that might have been true in the 1970s; it isn’t true now, of any good creative writing program. The programs I know about do not even try to “teach” people how to write; they select students who already can write, who have strong, distinct voices and a demonstrated commitment to their art. They merely help you do the best writing you want to do, as you define it, and they do this primarily by asking questions and getting you to think deeply about your own writing.

How did the course actually help you? Is it a path that you would recommend to other people who want to write?

Getting my MFA was immensely helpful in three ways: 1) it gave me the time and money to concentrate on my writing for two years, and this, when you think about it, is a pretty substantial statement of validation for an emerging writer: We think you’re good enough to make it, so we’re going to pay you to come here and write for two years; 2) It introduced me to some amazing, generous mentors who had been writing for longer than I had, and who therefore gave me lots of new ways to think about writing and the writing life; 3) It introduced me to some truly gifted writers of my own generation. The connections I made in the MFA program will last my whole life; we still read each other’s drafts, discuss what we’re reading, and encourage each other. This kind of community of writers is possible to forge outside an MFA program, of course, but it’s more difficult. So my answer to “should others go?” is a resounding yes: if you can get into a good creative writing course with significant financial aid.

What was your starting point for Evening is The Whole Day?

I began with the idea of these two sisters, one in America and one left behind; and with the image of a skinny young servant girl, accused of a crime, friendless and confused. I’ve always been interested in the place of live-in servants in their employers’ households. In many cases the relationship is a basically feudal one that persists in affluent, apparently Westernised societies. I wanted to get to the heart of such a relationship, to the precariousness of a servant’s place in the household and to her employers’ constant justification and willful blindness.

Those were two separate ideas in the very beginning, but they quickly came together, and I can’t quite explain how; the more I thought about these three characters, the more the parallels and the links revealed themselves.

The novel is about the secrets and betrayals in an Indian family living in Ipoh. How far is the family based on your own?

Not far at all. I have two siblings and we lived in Ipoh. That’s about the extent of the similarity. The plot is entirely invented; we never had servants, and my parents are nothing like the parents in the book. We had a lot less money and a completely different lifestyle. Some of the minor characters are amalgamations or modifications of people I came across or heard about in real life -- Malaysian readers will recognise some familiar elements in the murder trials scattered throughout the main narrative, for example, but even in these cases I’ve invented more than I’ve preserved. There isn’t a novelist on earth who doesn’t draw from his or her environment in this way, and no one in their right mind would argue that it counts as autobiography. A few material objects are taken from my own life, because, for some reason, I have very strong memories of material objects. The red Formica table, the green PVC settee, and the grandmother’s rattan chair are all real objects from my childhood, though not all belonged to my immediate family. There is a lot of emotional truth in the book, of course -- this, again, is true of all novels -- and I think the material objects helped me to access that emotional truth, if that makes sense. I’ve felt the father’s resentment at the political situation (though I wasn’t born early enough to experience the disappointments of the immediate post-independence era) and the mother’s anomie, and at various moments in the narrative I found myself identifying with one or the other child.

Which of the characters do you most identify with? You seem closest to the youngest daughter, Aasha at times, yet Uma’s story surely reflects your own to a great extent as she’s the gifted child who leaves Ipoh to go and study in the US.

Much of Uma’s story reflects the stories of many smart children from middle- and upper-middle-class Malaysian families; I do identify with her to some extent, but if I had to pick one character, it would be Aasha. Like her, I was much more of a watcher than a talker, and though I never had to keep such momentous secrets as she does, I did occasionally feel responsible for protecting the adults around me from what I knew or thought I knew -- again, in my case, this was more often a consequence of my personality than a reflection of reality. The perception of responsibility, in other words, was usually inaccurate, while for Aasha it is quite accurate. Popular rhetoric depicts children as trusting creatures who vociferously announce all their needs and desires; yet having been a deeply distrustful, secretive child myself, I wanted to speak for, even to defend, such children. Many of my favourite novels are about children who have too much knowledge (and/or who end up making terrible, irreversible choices): Waterland, The God of Small Things, Atonement, The Go-Between, The Story of Lucy Gault.

The Ubud Quill

You can pick up a free special edition of MPH's Quill magazine put together especially for the Ubud readers and Writers Festival which is taking place in Bali next month. It is however only available at the following outlets : 1. MPH One Utama 2. MPH Mid Valley 3. MPH Subang Parade 4. MPH Bangsar Village II I have a couple of pieces in the magazine including an interview with Janet de Neefe who founded the festival, an interview with Canadian author Camilla Gibb (whom many of you will remember from the KL Literary Festival), and the interview with Preeta Samarasan which also appeares in the current edition of Quill. Eric has put some really good stuff from the issue on his blog, including an an interview with Aravind Adiga (right) whose first novel The White Tiger is Booker longlisted. If the issue whets your appetite and makes you hungry for more contact with the authors featured ... well you know what you have to do!

Quill in Orbit

The latest edition of MPH's Quill magazine is out, complete with astronaut on the cover and some good content which editor Eric has listed here. The magazine is free to MPH card members and RM8 for non-members.

Tan Twan Eng's article about how to get an agent and improve the chances of your book being published is absolutely invaluable to anyone who plans to take that route.

I also loved Preeta Samarasan's review of Wena Poon's Lions in Winter :

Poon writes about the Asia I know, and she does so with grace, insight and compassion. In these eleven stories, East and West do not inhabit one dimensional roles - submissive versus dominant, traditional versus modern - but mingle to produce the knotty realities of globalisation.

And of course, Deepika Shetty interviews one of the deities in my literary firmament, Vikram Seth.

I didn't blog about the previous issue because I forgot to pick up my copy until just the other day, and then some poor sales assistant had to dig round in a back room to see if any were left! It was nice to see that the front cover pin-up boys were Amir Muhammad and Shahril Nizam. Much more alluring than the politicians who graced (?) previous issues.

Literary Glamour

Here are the pics of Daphne Lee and myself from the Seapark Brickhouse photoshoot from the new issue of MPH's Quill magazine, due out at any moment. You can click it up to full size and read the nonsense that burbled forth from my mouth. I am sitting in the bathtub which comes complete with frangipani tree. What literary glamour! Autographs later.

I liked the question about my ideal writing retreat. I long to sit and write in one of those beach side chalets on stilts over the sea at Pan Pacific, Pangkor. (Or better still Pankor Laut.) I'm sure my muse would be really awakened and ready to do great stuff if I could have a few months there. (Sponsorship deals greatly appreciated!)

What would your ideal writing retreat be?

My Celeb Day

A couple of pictures taken today.

This is on the set of Venus at NTV 7 after the interview with Tan Twan Eng, show host Aishah Sinclair (the lady in red), and the other folks behind the show Grace Liew (next to her), and the producer, Wan Sariah Wan Jaafar.

The NTV7 interview turned out to be a lot of fun. Aishah called me "a celebrity blogger" which made me smile and want to say "Aiyoh, no lah". She was so relaxed and warm and made the whole thing go really easily.

Tan Twan Eng joined us on the sofa after the first segment to talk about his book, and other things we touched on were whether really Malaysians aren't readers, about the British Council Library closing and the work BC does in Malaysia, about a FIRSTWoRKS workshop she had a picture of, how I'd enjoyed being the first reader in Malaysia of The Gift of Rain and what I'd thought of the book.

After that I drove to PJ and went searching for The Seapark Brickhouse, which turned out to bein a not-terribly-glam area. But the moment you step inside this beautifully renovated single-storey terraced house you feel as if you have entered another world.

The simplicity and airiness and sense of outside-brought-inside reminded me of Seksan's gallery, and his firm have apparently been involved in the project. I loved the monochrome unclutteredness. Never mind the bed and breakfast it is supposed to be, I would like to live in this house.

I posed around for photos, striking some pretty strange poses - one or two in the bathroom which was my favourite room with frangipani trees (for heaven's sake) growing up through the centre of it and no ceiling but the sky.

You will see the results in the next copy of Quill.

A whole gang of friends was there, Eric, Janet and May Lee from MPH, Daphne, Twan, and Adeline Loh who has a book about her travels in Zambia called Peeing in the Bush coming out.

We ate chicken rice, drank teh-ice, talked books and authors, and laughed a lot. A perfect afternoon.

Quality Quill

Renee was kind enough to pass me the latest copy of MPH's Quill magazine on Saturday, since I have a piece in it. Once again it's a winner, with some excellent articles on local books and writing. And there's not even a photo of a politician in sight this time!

Because it's the Merdeka issue there's a whole series of photos of local authors in their party frocks, talking about their hopes for the country.

I loved the article by Zurina Abu Bakar about her selection of coffee table books to give the essence of the country: many of her choices, particularly those on the history and natural history country are already on my bookshelves. This lady should write more!

Zawiyah Baba of the National Library writes about Malaysia's literary icons and she pays tribute to some of the greats including Keris Mas, Shahnon Ahmad, Usman Awang, Muhammad Haji Salleh, A. Saman Said, and K.S. Maniam. A veritable who is who on the Malay literary scene

Nisah Haji Haron who is a lawyer as well as an author (as so many of them are!) writes about copyright for writers, while Eric Forbes, editor for MPH publishing, has a good vent about wannabe authors who hand over imperfect manuscripts. There are those who want someone else to do the revisions for them so they can go on partying, and those who go to absurd lengths to prevent their manuscripts being edited at all! I don't envy Eric his job.

The interview with the irascible Rehman Rashid is very interesting indeed.

And then there is my article on writers who use dreams to inspire their writing.

Renee is so kind when she writes in her editorial:

... dedicated individuals like Sharon Bakar and Eric Forbes make reading local books cool. They are thick in the middle of action, helping out with the KL Writers Circle, the Breakfast Club, organizing readings, get-togethers, while their blogs chronicle what goes on ...

and I'm blushing!

If you want your copy of Quill, this issue is free to those who hold the store's little red card, but RM8 to all others.

(I'm not telling you who is who on the cover and the picture on the right. If you live here you should recognise 'em. If you're overseas, you probably won't care!)

Pascakolonialisma in Pink

The latest issue of Quill is yours for free if you flash your MPH card, and a mere RM8 if not.

It's crammed with so much good stuff I don't know where to begin.

I loved Eric Forbes' article on the short story, chock full of excellent reading recommendations which I would love to see the bookstore promoting! He also gives sterling advice about how to submit your manuscript.

It's a Long way to the Floor author David Byck explains about how he got started. Tan Twan Eng talks about the writing of The Gift of Rain, and FireWife author Tinling Choong (who will be visiting Malaysia in July) is interviewed at length.

Dina Zaman and Tunku Halim debate about whether you would take a look at the book a person reads before you decide to get married to them. Pragmatists both. (I think books are windows to the soul ... should have thought twice when I found only war stories on my beloved's bookshelves!)

The Ambassador for Mexico, H.E. Alfredo Perez-Bravo reveals his love for Octavio Paz, Marques, Vargos Llosa and Carlos Fuentes (good for him!) and talks about Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose as the ultimate airport novel (CSI Medieval Italy!).

There's a long interview with Farish Noor, and Dr. Faridah Manaf writes a very interesting piece about gender, race and nationalism in post-colonial Malaysia. Am most impressed that the Malay word for post-colonial is pascakolonial, which I will now slip into conversation with the gardener.

Yours truly writes about why Writers Need Friends which I dedicate to my scribbling running mates. (Saras, Mercy, Soo Choon, Leah - you're famous now!). My pics of the Night of the Living Text event are in there too.

But as I told you, my article on book banning ironically got censored out.

That doesn't surprise when the PM himself graces the cover, holding the book of tributes for his wife Datin Paduka Seri Endon who died of cancer in October 2005. The book A Bouquet of Jasmines. (Yes, "jasmines" with an "s"! - a big fat grammar blooper in the title!) was launched at a grand gala evening where everyone who is anyone wore pink and drank pink drinks (think Barbie!).

(Sorry, sorry ... I don't know where such cynicism comes from.)

January Quill

The January issue of MPH's Quill magazine is in-store for members of the Reader's Circle to collect and for others to buy (RM8). There's a couple of my articles in it, including one on the Ubud Readers' and Writers' Festival, and another on Blogging for Writers (which I could have written so much more about if not for the word limit ...).

The features grow more numerous and more interesting with each issue. I particularly enjoyed Eric Forbes article for writers - Write What You Know or What You Don't Know? which has some excellent examples of authors who were able to create convincing worlds without direct experience, and Chan Mei Ling's interview with Malay novelist Faisal Tehrani.

What I don't like - really don't like - about the magazine is that some of the pages look just too hectic and cramped, and that the endless list of new acquisitions by the National Library creates a "dead area" in the centre. Quill needs, as they say, "sexing up" ...

Quality Quill

Picked up the new issue of MPH's magazine Quill a couple of days back. There's a generous helping of yours truly - writing about why writers must read (the piece started life as this blog post but grew rather longer) and a fun list of latest books with one word titles (which I found dangerous to write because it made me want to buy the books myself!) The art work that went with the article was pretty nice: how many book titles can you pick out below and can you name the authors? (The grumbling myopics among you can click to enlarge!)

I was also quite thrilled to read a review of this blog by Chai Mei Ling. She says about me:

..she shares her (very) frank views on everything books, reading and writing in a light, conversational tone with a sporadic twinge of wickedness and a dab of sarcasm.

Sarcastic? Moi?

Mei Ling also reviews two other excellent local blogs about books and writing: Eric Forbes' Good Books Guide and Inky Hands which gives a home to the work of young writers.

Now I've finished blowing my own trumpet, I have to point out that there's tons of other good stuff in this issue, including an extremely interesting interview with Culture, Arts and Heritage minister, Datuk Seri Utama Dr. Rais Yatim about the local book industry. Eric Forbes gives sterling advice about how to get published, and Philip Gan (aka Eternal Wanderer) writes about coffee table books.

Then there are several articles in Malay including an interview with writer Nisah Haji Haron. And I learned from Shaharom TM Sulaiman that the Malay word for what ought to ail us is:

Biblioholisme

Love it!

Congrats, Renee and team, for creating a book magazine that grows more entertaining with every issue - and not just because you are kind enough to include me in it!

Respect Books!

For those unclear on the concept ...

(Click to enlarge, then click to enlarge some more ...)




(From Quill April 2005)

Shrink-Wrap the Parents!

Why do so many of the bookshops in Malaysia wrap their stock in plastic, a practice which discourages browsing?

Last week in StarMag, Nurindah Yunos who works in the children's area of one of the largest bookstores in Malaysia highlighted the problems that bookshops face:

I witness many acts of rudeness every single day, especially during the weekends. It wouldn't surprise me if I get a heart attack one day! Many kids step on books, handle them roughly land even tear the pages or steal the free gifts that come with some books. And what do the parents do? Nothing. Sometimes I feel like screaming at them, telling them we are a business entity and not some public library! My favourite response is to go up to the misbehaving child and say loudly: “Hey dear, please handle the book nicely and pass it to me after you are finished with it. And if you damage the book, mummy or daddy will have to pay for it.” When the parents hear the word “pay'“, they always tell their kids to put the books back on the shelves. We have tourists asking us why we wrap all our books. Well, we have no choice. Until our people know how to appreciate books, we will have to keep wrapping them up. Once, my colleague saw a girl tear a page from a magazine. When she asked the girl to pay for it, guess what, the mother argued that her child didn’t do it. When that didn't work, the woman insisted on paying only for the page that her daughter tore. Hello? If I tore your dress, can I just pay for that bit that was torn? Sorry, but I always feel like laughing out loud when people say we Malaysians have good manners and are civilised.

And this week another bookstore employee calling herself Helpless Bookworm took up the theme:

For bookstore staff, weekends and public holidays are a constant headache, no thanks to selfish customers who disrespect books and other people’s property. In short, the whole store becomes a “tsunami-stricken” zone. Books and magazines get strewn everywhere. It is an eyesore to see them on tables and display shelves, or atop rows of books. ... Despite the reminder to “Please ask staff for assistance to unwrap this book/ magazine”, some readers will tear off the plastic covers then stuff them in any available space. Some parents obligingly unwrap books for their children. One mother had the audacity to utter the four-letter word to an employee who advised her not to do so – right in front of her young son. And, to rub salt in a wound, parents let their little “terrors” meddle with buttons, fragile gadgets and playing cards by themselves. No supervision at all. Some adults have been caught switching the price tags of items. There are cases of customers camouflaging an expensive book with the jacket of a lower-priced one. You don’t need rocket science to understand why there are so many missing and damaged pages and items in the store. For instance, audio books with no compact discs. During one stock-check exercise, we found a rotting chicken bone stashed behind some books! There also were books with visible water stains, rendering them a total loss. Having experienced all these, I have no qualms about blaming irresponsible parents for their rude children.

The April 2005 issue of MPH's Quill magazine had photographs of stock ruined by customers (below - click to enlarge):

In the same issue Renee Koh writes about the need to respect books:

Damaged books means losses to bookstores, which in turn translates into even lower margins, and in the end, it is you, the genuine customers who will loose out, whether price-wise or because all the books will be wrapped up...

Customers need a course in book-browsing etiquette, it seems. Or maybe we should just shrink-wrap the errant ones!